


blood of another kind

by babysteps



Category: All For the Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Folklore, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Norwegian Mythology & Folklore, will tag more as story progresses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-24
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-07-18 00:46:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7292743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babysteps/pseuds/babysteps
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a house that sits alone, swallowed by the ice and cold that wraps the north. Inside is a family, starving and close to death. Out of desperation (and maybe just a sliver of guilt), a mother sells her adopted son for a promise of warmth and wealth to those who remain. He goes quietly. He goes willingly. He does not expect to be brought to an ice castle by a beast who tells him, <i>do not be afraid, I'll not harm you</i>. He does not bother to correct him.</p>
<p>(A retelling of East of the Sun, West of the Moon)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Preface

Snow is a steady and constant thing. Like rivers, like mountains, the mounds of crystalline white have gorged a home in the barren landscape of the north. It comes often, like an illness, and as such the family who makes their small home in its swirls and dips knows its symptoms. 

They know that the air turns sharp in the space around red faces and makes tiny cuts of ice and cold in the hollows of pores. They know that the sun waits in the sky, content to sit and watch them hurry to prepare for the fast-approaching decent. Wood is stacked. Fires are lit. Doors are firmly shut. They watch their bodies move ever so closer in a frozen haze and find themselves reaching for thin blankets more often than before. This is routine. This is normal. 

Andrew is bored of it. 

He wants to take the icicles that line the roof of his hut and carve the snow out of the fabric of his life. He wants to grab handfuls of the slush that pools at his feet and make an ocean to swim away, away, away. The snow is oppressive; the snow chokes. The snow builds a wall around a house already so distant from others and in the howling of the wind outside whispers, _slow down, be still_. This constant isolation, these hoarse whispers- they are things that are not boring to Andrew. They are shared with a different routine. They are a part of a different normal. 

You see, when the sun finally tires and slinks from its post high in the sky, and darkness falls like a curtain, Andrew follows this other routine. He finishes drying the meat and washes his hands (like every night). He checks for leaks in the roof and goes to kiss Cass good night (like every night). She smiles at him with her warm eyes shrouded by wrinkles and tells him, _one day, we'll have enough money to buy furs to keep our bodies warm instead of not-yet frozen, and enough food to eat until our stomachs burst_ , and Andrew pretends to believe her (like every night). He turns to Drake, seated closely by the fire, and wishes him a restful sleep (like every night). Drake smiles at him, all sharp teeth and haggard planes, and wishes him the same (like every night). Andrew walks to his roll in a far off room and lies on his stomach and distantly wonders what it would be like to smother yourself with a thin pillow filled with frozen soil (like every night). He waits, and doesn't sleep, and when he hears footsteps that treat the ground they walk upon callously, he tells himself that soon, the time will come when the supplies will dwindle lower than can be survived, and Drake will have to journey to the far-off village in the south with their meager coins and barter for more. And, when rough hands peel rough wool back from Andrew’s form, well, he tries not to think that journeys are always made of one part travel safely and another welcome back and that six-moon trips to the village of Seal aren’t really all that permanent. 

Andrew tries not to think at all. 

(Like every night).


	2. Chapter One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The snow dances down, down, down to the earth.

When the snow falls this particular night, it is thicker than silence left to fill an empty room. In the soft glare of the moon, tiny patterns of cuts and curves dance and slide down, down, down to the earth below. They stick to the ground like a curse and don’t let go, don’t hold back, don’t let up. More flakes fall, one right after the other, each urging the other faster along. They dance fast and frantic, growing bolder and bigger, until the song reaches its final crescendo of frenzied twists and spills and dips and curls and - 

It is done. The flakes have stopped falling.

In the end, the earth is whiter than has ever been known in story or sight. Under the mad dance of the flakes, all is made nothing. They have ended their waltz of _fall, stick, don’t ever let go_. There is no applause. It is done. It is enough. 

It is more than enough.

The people inside the tiny house trapped in the middle of nowhere are aware of nothing except the dark of slumber and an eerie silence. One sleeps deeper than ever before, weary body accepting the stillness as a gift. One feels muscles lock, preparing for the moment when the small fire kept inside the house will not be enough. 

One flinches awake.

He opens his eyes, aware of nothing. Not the sort of nothing this One typically feels, but the sort of nothing that means everything has ceased to move, to vibrate, to tremble. There is no movement outside, no signs of life hanging on to its precarious balance. This makes the boy uneasy. He looks around the tiny house and counts two bodies - _one_ , soft and pliant, smooth and buttery; _two_ , hard and unyielding, rough and cruel- and knows that, inside, this house is well. This house is content. The answer, then, like all things must and will be, is in the unknown.

Soft as a whisper, Andrew moves slowly to the only window, making sure to grab the thin blanket used to fend off frost and wrap it about his shoulders. He feels the air around him sharper than it has ever been before. He feels the cold wrapped around his ankle like a tether. He grasps the blanket closer around his body. He knows that this is not enough, that it will never be, but now is not the time to worry about silly things like blankets and warmth because quiet feet have finally made their way to the shaft of moonlight spilling like thread from the window and Andrew can lean forward and peer outside to see.

Andrew leans forward and peers outside and sees only white. 

Where there should have been a small pathway worn by routine, there is white. Where there should have been a small shed that stores dry meat, there is white. Where there should have been liquid sky, there is white. Andrew sees nothing but white. Andrew presses a hand wrapped in wool to his mouth and chokes back the hysterical laugh clawing at his throat. 

Where there is white, there is death. This, Andrew knows. 

His eyes stay on the white wall filling his vision as he stumbles back to his bedroll. _There is nothing,_ he thinks. _There is nothing but death._ He feels his heels touch the bedding. He allows his body to drop like a stone. _I will turn to nothing in this house._

Andrew does not sleep for the remainder of the night. He keeps his eyes on the white and wills himself to feel something beside the nothing of the snow. He thinks of his body, slowly turning to stone under the sharp caress of the cold. He thinks of Cass, softly falling still under a blanket of thick snow. He thinks of Drake, dead. 

He finds he cannot quite will himself to feel anything after all. 

When the pallid morning light trembles forward to offer its warmth, Andrew turns his head and reaches a hand out to the sleeping body of Cass beside him. She awakens after one touch, a second, a third. Her warm eyes wander and meet the cold of Andrew’s, where they follow the hard lines of his face to his shoulder that is straining wool, to the his arm that is reaching out, to his finger that is pointing at death. 

She cannot see anything through her tears after that. 

Drake awakens after Cass lets out her third sob. His body unwinds, languid as a snake, and he slowly turns his face to the sound. He finds his mother with her hands pressed tightly over her eyes. He finds Andrew sitting perfectly still by her side. He finds his body lunging towards Andrew to _end, break, ruin._ When his hands wrap around Andrew’s throat, he does not question why he finds no fear on Andrew’s face. He is used to seeing reactions in other places, in other nights. 

Andrew does not react, but Cass does.

She reaches her hands toward Drake like a prayer and tries to gently coax his anger to smoke. _My son,_ she whispers, _leave him and look outside._ She takes his wan face in her calloused hands and turns it to the wall of white. He feels himself go limp under her palms. She gathers him in her thin arms and murmurs assurances meant to comfort in his ear. Andrew sits against the wall of the lonely house, not quite forgotten, but not quite remembered.

_It does not matter,_ he thinks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next: a visitor


	3. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A tale of beginnings.

Once upon a time, there was a child who found bits of himself woven in the land around him. His skin was as white as the snow that caught on thin cloth wrapped around a tiny body. His eyes were as yellow as the wolf’s that tracked the left-behind footsteps of a woman holding a small baby. His lips were as pink as the fingertips that gently closed the eyes of a child left on the stone that marked the entrance to a tiny house in the middle of nowhere. He was beautiful in a way that made people still as the rivers in the deep of winter. Made them quiet as the creatures hidden at night. Made them think about things they saw if only for a moment in the corner of their eye. 

Once upon a time, there was a child who found himself abandoned on hard rock. He did not cry. He did not scream. In his eyes, there was a beginning and an end and an acceptance, and it seemed like they all came together to rest beside him on the rock where he was left to fate. As the sun crept closer to its resting point high in the sky, the boy felt something in the air around him. He felt a whisper as cold as ice twist in the air in front of him; he felt the edge of it snake its way ever so closer to his nose. He felt its touch, so sharp it almost cut, but soft in a way that found the boy twisting his face into an expression of annoyance and letting a mighty sneeze echo into quiet stillness of the land. 

One upon a time, there was a woman with a heart that was as soft as butter left near a hot stove. She had chocolate eyes and chocolate hair, and her son who was also her everything liked to look at her and think of everything sweet in the world. She had a good ear, too, good for the long days she spent sitting by the fire, waiting for the return of her boy from villages far away. It was also good for hearing big sneezes from tiny children. 

On this day, it was a very good ear. 

On this day, she looked around her tiny house that was empty apart from herself and the small fire before her and furrowed her brow. She listened again, closely – _there_. _There_ was a sound that was loud enough to break the silence like a vow; _there_ was a sound that was soft enough to where it could yet be remade. Soft as the whisper from a just-pinched flame, she crossed the cramped room to the tiny door, and reached for the rope lodged in the wood in front of her. Slowly, she pulled the rope and opened the door and looked down and-

Well, you know the rest of the story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and so we learn of Andrew's beginnings - kind of. the next chapter will be long, I promise!
> 
> next: wishes


	4. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the wind begins to howl and suddenly they are not alone.

When Andrew was just growing into the tips of his toes and the edges of his ears, Cass used to tell him stories about the fae children who danced around on the edges of snowflakes. She told him that they trilled melodies about the sharp winds of the north and spun tales about ice castles and wishes that burned black in the white of the land. She told him that they winked at small little boys who tried to reach out and grab them off their snowflakes. She carded her fingers through his hair and said, _That is why you must never go out alone, Andrew. The north is full of beings who would seek to trick you and steal you away. Stay inside where it’s warm and the fae will leave you for their dances in the wild outside._

Andrew didn’t believe any of it, not for one moment.

(Except, when Cass told him about villagers who were turned to ice for their desire to grab, to steal, to _take_ \- well, that seemed a little more realistic to a boy who had grown used to leaving everything inside in the sure grip of the cold.)

(And with the way they were all sitting absolutely still around the cramped room, well, Andrew began to find those stories just a little more compelling.)

There is Drake, sprawled on his bedroll like he’s hungry for space, lying perfectly still and tense, gazing at the shoddy brown roof of the house.

There is Cass, curled in on herself near the fire, hugging thin arms around a thin body like she could stop herself from shattering into sharp little bits and pieces.

And finally, there is Andrew, leaning back against the wall of the house that allowed him the luxury of keeping life, death, and eternal sleep all in the direct line of his vision.

None of them have spoken since Cass stopped Drake from killing Andrew. After he had been soothed, Drake stormed off to his bedroll and threw himself on it like he had everything and nothing to prove. Cass had turned to watch him go, spared one glance for Andrew, and finally moved her sightless gaze to the dull light of the fire. Andrew had simply relaxed where he had been shoved, willing to simply sit and wait for his death. 

He did not mind, really, that it came in a wall of snow. 

Really, he had always thought that he would find himself dead at the end of Drake’s reach or at the razor sharp edge of his own butchering knife. Drake had always done the hunting, you see, but his interest ended when the body stilled - there was no fight, no game that could be won after that. Andrew was always left with the task of cutting the animal to smaller and smaller bits so that they could drop one or two pieces in hot water and smile and call it a meal. It was in this way that Andrew grew to understand death, understand where red meant _go_ and green meant _away_. He learned it with a knife taken to another’s flesh; he learned a taste of it with a knife taken to his own. 

He thought he had preferred to die by his own hand, but with the great white wall erected around the house, he found he did not care either way. He had hoped Cass would live until she was old and grey. He thought he might be sorry that her thread had been cut so short.

His musings were cut short when Drake took his fist and slammed it into the wall.

Where Drake had once been as still as death, he was now only vibrating anger and warning signals. His face was red and his eyes were feverish. 

_Damn,_ Drake choked through the broken silence. _Damn it all!_

Cass turned to her son with a motion slowed by despair. She tried to soothe him with soft words - end the violence before it became something solid, something tangible. She reached for him, ready to comfort, ready to stop, but he grabbed her wrists and brought them together like they were bound by rope before she could. He was gentle with her, so very soft, Andrew noted, and when she rested her fingertips on his cheeks it looked like thanks.

_My son,_ she whispered. _Drake._

His anger twisted into an ugly grief. He began to rock, back and forth, here and there, until Cass gently pulled her hands free and pulled him to her in a warm hug. His body began to tremble, shaking soundly under the weight of his despair. He wrapped his arms around her waist and buried his head into the crevice of her neck.

_We were going to make it, Mother,_ he mumbled. _I was going to start for Seal this noon. We were going to be okay._

Andrew, bored by Cass’s soft words, had moved his gaze to the wall of snow framed by the window. He shifted his gaze to the tangled mess of limbs before him when he heard Drake’s tearful reply. 

He did not care for Drake’s grief. He did not care to see the comfort the man sought in the arms of his mother. Most especially, he did not care for the affection given so freely by Cass, so gentle and warm where Andrew had received nothing but silence and the occasional touch. It was not Cass’s fault, he knew. Cass knew how to love just as well as any other, but she only had enough room in her heart for one. It was simply Andrew’s fate to have come in last place.

“We are going to die,” said Andrew. “Accept this and be still. Your cries are too loud. I would like to meet death with no accompaniment.”

Cass turned toward Andrew like a misbehaving shadow, twitchy with horror. Drake wrenched himself from his mother’s grip and pulled himself to his full height. He stalked, one step right after the other, to Andrew’s seated form on the other side of the room. He towered over Andrew like something pulled straight from the boy’s nightmares. Slowly, so slowly Andrew counted one, two, three paired heartbeats, Drake lowered his body so his furious eyes were level with the dull yellow of Andrew’s.

_Andrew-,_ said Cass from her place beside her son’s bedroll. _Drake. Don’t, please, I beg-._

Drake cut off her entreaty with a heavy backhand to Andrew’s face, knocking the boy with enough force that Andrew found his nose aligned with booted feet.

_That is enough,_ Drake snarled. _You are a burden of a boy. You have neither wealth nor worth. You should have been left in the cold to die._

Andrew gazed steadily up at Drake from his position by the taller man’s feet. He blinked, once, twice, and on the third he lifted his head and looked to Cass. 

He found nothing. He was not surprised. 

“Cass? Do you have anything to add?” he asked, voice as steady as the silence outside.

Her eyes filled with tears. She looked blearily from a towering violence of a son to the fallen form of one not quite so. She was terrified, she was numb; she was only somewhat guilty. Her tongue was still in her throat. She offered no reply.

Drake’s laugh broke the silence.

_My mother agrees with me, you wretched child,_ he scoffed. _Do you know what she whispered to me not one moment ago?_

Cass turned her face back to Drake’s, not quite willing to interrupt his proclamation with her death looming so near. The time for softening blows had passed, and she found herself willing to follow the path lit by the ire of her son.

Drake reached down and grabbed Andrew by the hair, dragging him in front of Cass’s stony face. Andrew did not kick. He did not squirm. He kept his gaze on the woman he used to call mother and waited for the cruel words sure to fall from a wicked tongue.

He did not have to wait long.

_My mother said to me, ‘Do not worry – I will not let you die. I will give you everything that I am so that you may live.’_

Drake angrily released Andrew’s hair from his tight grip and crouched down next to the boy. He grabbed Andrew’s face roughly and peered into yellow eyes, ready to catch whatever emotion followed with his next words.

_I asked her, ‘What about Andrew?’ and do you know what she said?_

Andrew stared evenly at him. Drake pulled his lips back in a snarl.

_She said, ‘He is not my son.’_

There was nothing but heartbeats in the room. 

Drake peered closely at Andrew, looking for a reaction. He did not know that Andrew had learned how to mimic the rattle of Death’s tongue at the edge of a butcher’s knife, learned to anticipate and await its kiss with equal parts. He did not know that Andrew had given up all hope of being deemed worthy enough for any of Cass’s love, deemed worthy enough to be called a son. He did not know that this did not hurt Andrew because Andrew could not be hurt.

Andrew was a dead man walking.

The shaky sound of Cass drawing a breath ended the tense silence.

_I’m sorry,_ she whispered. _He is my son and I found you but it is not enough and it will never be and I hope in my heart of hearts that he may live even if my body grows cold and yours desiccates before my eyes._

Andrew slowly shifted his gaze to look at her.

“Say the words, then. Say what you mean.”

She drew her lips into a thin line.

_I wish I had left you to the cold the day I found you. I wish you were gone._

Andrew closed his eyes. He noted distantly that oh, this is what nothing feels like. 

Drake laughed, a cruel and caustic sound. He made to grab for Andrew, to drag him to the wall, to bang him against it until he screamed, always such a high and pretty sound, so loud and-

The wind began to _scream_ outside.

Drake dropped Andrew and grabbed at his ears. Cass flinched and did the same. 

Andrew blinked.

The wind was a deafening roar, shrieking long and loud. It whipped the snow around the house into a fury of white that writhed and twisted in the torrents of it. Cass tried to call for Drake, but her lips formed words that were tossed around the house until they shattered under the weight of the terrible roar. The wind began to thrash around faster and faster. Caught in the force of its anger, the house shook and shook and it felt like they were all being thrown around and around and suddenly it became so cold, so very cold, and Andrew felt his breath turn to ice in his mouth and he saw Cass’s tears freeze on her cheeks and he just wished it would stop so he could just hurry up and die.

With that thought, the house came to an absolute standstill. 

The wind had ceased to be.

Andrew blinked and blearily looked around. He saw Drake slumped over and barely conscious. He saw Cass curled into a fetal position. He saw the wall of white that used to fill the frame of the window suddenly cut perfectly in half so that there was one half sky and one half snow visible outside. Dazedly, Andrew followed the diagonal line of the snow to sloppy corner of the window to the wooden door of the house. 

To the wooden door that was slowly swinging open. 

Drake stirred awake and the motion and immediately became tense. Cass took one look and curled tighter in on herself, hoping to stop it all from happening.

The door was still opening.

Finally, with a creak and a shudder it stopped. Everyone held their breath. In its doorway-

Well. 

Andrew had been knocked around quite a bit by the wind, but he was fairly certain he was staring at a giant Arctic Fox.

The thing was huge and white, with some sense of Otherness radiating in the space around it. It was covered with fine fur that was untouched by the furies that had raged so furiously outside. Its eyes were an icy blue that was colder than any frost or snow or anything, really, that Andrew had ever seen and- oh. 

Those eyes were trained on him. 

Slowly, all the while keeping Andrew pinned by the endless cold of its gaze, the beast began to move. There was one soft step and then another, until, impossibly, it was completely inside the house.

Andrew noted that the house only served to make it look bigger.

Cass let out a tiny gasp, unsupported and weak. She tried to scramble backwards to the sure presence of the wall, but felt her arms give out when the beast turned its eyes to her.

_You will stop,_ it said, but Andrew never saw its mouth open.

Cass stopped. She found that this was all she could do. Drake, who had been trying to stealthily move to help his mother, found himself frozen as well. 

(Andrew purposefully twitched his fingers and was filled with dull relief when he found that they obeyed his instructions. He could still move, he could still flee is he wished.)

(If he wished.)

The thing kept its eyes on the frozen form of Cass. All movement save heartbeats and Andrew’s fingers had ceased. The whole world seemed to hold its breath, waiting to see what would happen, what will happen.

_You have made a wish,_ the beast said. _I have come for the boy._

(Andrew wondered if fae children had ever danced with magical foxes.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promised a longer chapter, didn't I? 
> 
> next: it is done


	5. Chapter Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A wish, a wish, a twist and a fist.

Wishes are finicky things. They make their home in the back hollows of your head when your thoughts are too busy with making the day’s bread or kindling the night’s fire. They creep around, slowly and lightly, looking for dark corners thoughts. The mind is a complex thing, you see, and while the majority of it may be good and kind and light, there is always that tiny bit that wishes for more, for hurt, for things to break in the night. 

This, as it were, is where most wishes make their home. 

Oh, of course there are some good wishes. Some children wish that their mothers would look less weary at night. Some mothers wish their children would smile a little more. Some fathers wish they could make things better for thin bodies and creaky bones. The world is not a terrible place; there is always some good being done here or there. But in this world, in this place, in this time, there is more dark than light, more inky shadows than sunbeams. The wishes here are heady things, meant to be whispered into pillows with a moon hanging lowly in the sky, meant never to see the light of day. They were not meant to be addressed. But when they break from their chains, when they become so heavy in one’s thoughts that there is no looking away, no hiding behind closed eyes-

That is when wishes become more than words.

That is when they become a call.

Cass did not know this, of course. Perhaps if she had she would’ve let barbed words stay on sharp tongues. 

As it were, she chose to unhinge her jaw and spew her filthy thoughts. 

As it were, she chose to wound that which is already dead.

As it were, she chose to bring the weight of her sins down on them all.

(No one had expected great white beasts, but, well, these things work in mysterious ways.)

The thing, after allowing his words to settle like ash on everyone’s minds, blinked.

It was as if a spell had been broken, or maybe even made.

Cass suddenly began to move again, body lurching forward with the removal of unseen restraints. She fell forward onto her hands, limp brown hair falling from her shoulders to shroud her face as she looked up at the white fox before her. Her mouth trembled, a frail little thing that looked to be caught in the wave of her fear. Her lips moved apart and then back together again, but no words fell forward.

Drake, by contrast, was full of motion. He was vibrating anger, kinetic energy put over a fire until it burst into flames. He jerked forward, looking as if he was ready to slit the beast’s throat from ear to ear, but then he also looked torn, caught between an incessant will to murder and a duty of a son to a mother. Drake lurched to a stop between the beast and his terrified mother after his first step, frozen in his indecision. Eyes promising violence, he finally moved quickly to his mother’s form and gathered her in his arms as one would a child or a breakable thing. Cass timidly peeked up at the fox from where she was tucked into the nape of her son’s neck.

Andrew scoffed.

Loudly.

All eyes, including those of the beast, moved to where Andrew was sitting with his head quite casually tipped back against the wall. His legs were crossed and his eyes were slightly hooded as he slid his gaze from Cass and Drake’s display to the beast in the room. Drake’s lips curled into a snarl as he loosened his grip on Cass, ready to cross the room and punish the punitive boy. He was stopped by Cass squeezing his bicep. She was looking up at him, warning him with her gaze to _be still, be silent, there are bigger threats than the scorn of an unloved boy._

The beast’s eyes, however, crinkled at the sound of Andrew’s scoff. Andrew was sure it was amused. 

He scowled at it. 

The beast winked in response. 

( _Stupid magical fox,_ Andrew thought.) 

Cass’s small voice made its way from her throat to the ears of Andrew. 

_Why…why have you come?_ whispered Cass from behind Drake’s form. Her voice felt like nothing in the room, a simple breath and then gone without a trace. 

Andrew scoffed again. 

“Weren’t you listening, _mother_? The beast is a wish granter, and you’ve made quite the wish.” 

At Andrew’s words, Drake pushed his mother from his arms and made as if to stand up. 

(Ready to fight, that one. Always ready to fight.) 

_The boy is right,_ said the beast. 

Drake was stunned to stillness at the sound. Andrew heard the voice in his head, filling his thoughts with nothing but the reverberations from the beast’s words. It sounded like a heartbeat, sure and steady. He heard it everywhere all at once, from the corner of the room to the crack in the wall to the breath pulled from his aching lungs. Drake had heard it too, Andrew was sure, as his face shifted to looked dazed instead of angry. Cass clutched her hands to her heart and whimpered. 

Both the beast and Andrew ignored her. Drake couldn’t help but do the same. 

_You, Cass Spear, have made a wish. I am here to grant it._

The fox kept its eyes trained on Andrew the entire time his not-voice filled the space in and around the humans. Andrew stared back, eyes betraying nothing and no one. 

Drake tilted his face to glare up at the fox filling the doorway. 

_What wish do you speak of, beast?_ he scoffed, rough hands curling into harder fists. 

Andrew spoke before the fox could. 

“He means the one where she wished I had turned to ice on your door step. He means the one where she wished I was gone.” 

His voice didn’t shake. It didn’t sound angry. It sounded like nothing, like the worst sort of something. 

The beast blinked in agreement. 

_You have wished for the boy to be gone. I will take him,_ it said. 

Andrew’s face was impassive. Drake and his mother wore matching expressions of bleary confusion. 

There was silence while the courage to reply was gathered. Andrew counted five breaths, in and out, deep and slow, before Cass spoke. 

_What do you mean by this?_

Finally, finally, the beast turned its eyes full of ice to Cass. She flinched. Drake looked as if he wanted to move towards her, but wisely held back. He did not want to fall prey to the ice again. It seems as if sometimes he could be made to stop. 

_I will take him the beast repeated,_ the weight of its words no less heavy than the first time. 

Cass looked more confused than before, stunned at the offer before her. Drake spoke so she did not have to. 

_Why? Why take him? He is nothing to no one, and all his absence will accomplish is a shortening in the time it will take us to die._

(Andrew silently agreed.) 

_I will take him,_ the beast said once again in reply. _You may ask for anything in return._

Its words shocked Cass out of her stupor. Her eyebrows rose as her mouth dropped in shock. She exchanged a furtive glance with Drake, who looked as if he had already decided upon the matter. There was a tense silence in the room. The beast waited patiently, content to stare and move his tail slowly from side to side. 

Andrew matched his breaths with its movements and sat as still as ever, content to have his fate bartered before his eyes. He did not care, really. He was sure to die one way or the other, by beast or fox. 

Drake and Cass seemed to reach an accord at the same time. Cass pressed her lips together in a thin line and glanced once at Andrew. 

He grinned at her. 

She recoiled, and drew her arms around her body. She raised her chin and met Drake’s gaze. 

She nodded exactly once. 

Drake turned to the fox. 

_We want warmth to last a lifetime and food to keep us full forever. We ask this, and nothing else. You will have the boy if you accept._

The beast seemed unsurprised at Drake’s words. It turned to look at Andrew once again. 

Andrew’s heart did nothing but beat on, steady, steady, sure. 

_They would trade your life for their own. You are nothing to them._

Its words were not meant to be cruel, and Andrew did not take them as such. 

“This is not something that is unknown to me. I understand, as I always have.” 

The beast blinked in acceptance and turned back to the tense forms of Drake and Cass. Cass had grown slightly more pale at Andrew’s words, but Drake was openly sneering. 

Suddenly, the wind began to pick up. 

It whipped around the house, faster and faster, pitch rising in tandem with its speed. It screamed, shrill and angry, as the beast once again spoke. Its voice thundered over the sound of the wailing wind. 

_For a lifetime of warmth and a forever of satiation, you, Cass Spear and Drake Spear, trade away the life of your adopted son and brother, the boy you call Andrew._

Snow began to throw itself at the walls of the house, furious and heavy. The wind was moving too quickly to be followed with the eye, and the house began to groan under the abuse. The beast spoke on. 

_Your wish cannot be unwished. Our bargain cannot be unmade._

The wind was deafening now, causing the mother and son in the house to scream mutely in agony, their faces twisted in silent pain and their voices lost to the wind. 

Andrew did not hear the wind. He heard nothing but his own heartbeat. 

_It is done,_ the beast said. 

Just as suddenly as it started, everything stopped. The wind, the snow- everything. It was an eerie sort of stillness, the kind where the presence of what has been in motion is left hanging in the hollows of your ear. Cass and Drake had been thrown together, gaunt fear burrowed in the shape of their eyes and mouths. 

_Andrew,_ said the beast in the new silence of the house. _Will you come with me?_

Andrew thought that it was rather an odd thing to have been bartered like nothing and then asked for permission like it was worth something. 

He shrugged and got up, limbs creaking in protest. 

As he carefully made his way across the room to the beast, he felt the eyes of Cass and Drake following him, tracing his silhouette with their stricken gazes. He ignored them for a final time. 

Finally, he found himself in front of the fox. He tilted his eyes up to meet its gaze. He saw ice in them, the kind that etches itself across tiny windows in the dead of night. They were not unkind, he found. 

“Where to?” he asked. 

The fox’s eyes crinkled. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: I'm gonna post regularly !!  
> y'all: Oh, man, that's the biggest lie you've ever told.
> 
> In all seriousness, I'm terribly sorry! I was dealing with some Daddy Issues™ and also Personal Issues™, so that kind of put everything on hold. Also, I went on vacation. But I should be good now!
> 
> next: footprints across snow

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!
> 
> this is a retelling of the Norwegian folk story East of the Sun, West of the Moon. as such, it will feature elements of fantasy, but it will also hold true (ish) to the characters of the series. I hope to update regularly!
> 
> next: it gets worse


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